LAS VEGAS—A constant bugbear in automotive tech is how inconvenient it is to have to take one's car to the dealership to get a software update—something Tesla owners often gloat about since their cars don't suffer that problem. Well, have faith, non-Tesla owners, because it looks like the auto industry is moving in the right direction. To find out more, we spoke to Harman's Yoram Berholtz at CES.

Cars are no longer the dumb machines they used to be; instead, they're increasingly becoming the most expensive computers any of us will own. Software controls everything—the throttle, brakes, steering, and infotainment system—and those things are often connected to the Internet thanks to cheap and rugged LTE modems.

In the video above, Berholtz walks us through the service delivery platform Harman is supplying to OEMs. The platform lets a car maker update any software or firmware on the car, from things deep in the vehicle the user would never see (like engine management software) to revised infotainment systems or map updates.

Not all updates are equal, of course; some are going to be critical systems that need to be fixed to satisfy a recall or patch a security hole, whereas others are less important and can be postponed or ignored by owners. The platform gives OEMs a way to deploy those updates, which can be forced out to a fleet, pushed out silently, or pulled in by owners at the time of their choosing. There's also some fine-grained control that can restrict OTA updates to Wi-Fi (as opposed to LTE) or which require a vehicle to be parked before updating, and so on.

Security is obviously an issue here, something Berholtz said must be addressed holistically by OEMs, but he pointed out that being able to push out revised software that fixes bugs or exploits rapidly would be a much better option than the lengthy process of taking one's car to a dealer.

It might be some time before the entire automotive world has adopted this approach to OTA updates, but you only need to look at how happy Tesla's customers are with the practice to see that it's a no-brainer.